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S-M / Helen Chasin You have decided to live forever and take me with you. This is around sunrise, your discovery of the horizon, or: nothing to stop us, nothing. Before that was the darkest part. Your father died young in it he hurt you, everything he and your mother did was because of love, they said so there's blood somewhere to prove it, thickened into the murky flower colors of old wallpapers. Those days glow in the memory like bruises, yellowing. The same twist in all the family stories how the kiss of the strap makes you feel how you won't be that much of a man no matter how hard, how long. Their lesson in happiness you miss it a little, don't you? Some of it comes back in pictures: what are those two doing? Bad booze takes you back, and black-and-blue music but not rough enough. You want to try ... listen you never told anyone this if I love you I'll love it. You have ideas death is too soon for. And I am there wearing something from the back of the magazine. You love me like that, no matter how great later gets: my arm half-raised as in waving, the shadows in my expression, the pull my body follows. You don't want to miss one overexcited minute in the series of white nights you see ahead of us, even the bad places. I am so right for them. Has anyone said I'm beautiful when I'm worried? I am and more each heartbeat. You mean it. If we start now we have from now on ours, darling the heat of the sound of your breathing, the catch in your smile, the light in your eyes. 28 ¦ The Missouri Review ...

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